UPDATE: Tommy Hilfiger has released a statement in regards to his recent interview.
"Gigi is truly the definition of a ‘Tommy Girl'—her magnetic personality is bright, confident and always optimistic. I've known her for many years, and am extremely proud to have her as the ambassador of my brand and as a collaborator of our collections," Tommy said in a statement to E! News Wednesday evening. "Any statement to the contrary is completely false. The headline from the interview with Yahoo was misleading and has since been corrected."
———
A Tommy Hilfiger and Gigi Hadid collaboration seems like a no-brainer, but there was a time when the supermodel didn't necessarily look like the typical Tommy runway model.
In an interview with Yahoo Style, Hilfiger looked back on working with his future Tommy x Gigi design partner during New York Fashion Week Fall 2015 in New York City.
"Our casting director said, 'She doesn't really fit because you know she's not quite as tall as the other girls, she's not quite as thin," the designer recalled. "So they put a red, white and blue poncho on her."
The garment "covered a lot of her her body, unfortunately," Hilfiger said, "but received millions of hits."
This gave him an idea. "I said, you know, why don't we ask her to design a line with us?" he told Yahoo Style. "So I said, 'Gigi, come design this for me. We'll do a Gigi Tommy Hilfiger line."
That's exactly what they did—the Tommy x Gigi collection debuted in September during New York Fashion Week Spring 2017. In the 48 hours following the show, WWD reports there 900 percent traffic increase to tommy.com overall, and more than 70 percent of visitors during this time were new to the site.
"Designing with Tommy was an incredible experience," said Hadid in an interview with Harper's Bazaar. "Every time I see him it reminds me that being positive is so important. He's always happy and welcoming and warm, and it trickles down to his entire company. Being nice is so important. It's something I think Tommy appreciates in me and something I appreciate in him, so that's why we work well together."